⚡ Cairo Native ⚡

A compiler to convert Cairo's intermediate representation "Sierra" code
to machine code via MLIR and LLVM.

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• Getting Started
• Included Tools
  • Scripts
  • cairo-native-compile
  • cairo-native-dump
  • cairo-native-run
  • cairo-native-test
  • cairo-native-stress
  • scarb-native-dump
  • scarb-native-test
• Benchmarking

For in-depth documentation, see the developer documentation.

Disclaimer

🚧 Cairo Native is still being built therefore API breaking changes might happen often so use it at your own risk. 🚧

For versions under 1.0 cargo doesn't comply with semver, so we advise to pin the version the version you use. This can be done by adding cairo-native = "0.1.0" to your Cargo.toml

Getting Started

Dependencies

• Linux or macOS (aarch64 included) only for now
• LLVM 19 with MLIR: On debian you can use apt.llvm.org, on macOS you can use brew
• Rust 1.78.0 or later, since we make use of the u128 abi change.
• Git

Setup

This step applies to all operating systems.

Run the following make target to install the dependencies (both Linux and macOS):

make deps

Linux

Since Linux distributions change widely, you need to install LLVM 19 via your package manager, compile it or check if the current release has a Linux binary.

If you are on Debian/Ubuntu, check out the repository https://apt.llvm.org/ Then you can install with:

sudo apt-get install llvm-19 llvm-19-dev llvm-19-runtime clang-19 clang-tools-19 lld-19 libpolly-19-dev libmlir-19-dev mlir-19-tools

If you decide to build from source, here are some indications:

Install LLVM from source instructions

# Go to https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases
# Download the latest LLVM 19 release:
# The blob to download is called llvm-project-19.x.x.src.tar.xz

# For example
wget https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/download/llvmorg-19.1.5/llvm-project-19.1.5.src.tar.xz
tar xf llvm-project-19.1.5.src.tar.xz

cd llvm-project-19.1.5.src.tar
mkdir build
cd build

# The following cmake command configures the build to be installed to /opt/llvm-19
cmake -G Ninja ../llvm \
   -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="mlir;clang;clang-tools-extra;lld;polly" \
   -DLLVM_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
   -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="Native" \
   -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/llvm-19 \
   -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo \
   -DLLVM_PARALLEL_LINK_JOBS=4 \
   -DLLVM_ENABLE_BINDINGS=OFF \
   -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ -DLLVM_ENABLE_LLD=ON \
   -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=OFF

ninja install

Setup a environment variable called MLIR_SYS_190_PREFIX, LLVM_SYS_191_PREFIX and TABLEGEN_190_PREFIX pointing to the llvm directory:

# For Debian/Ubuntu using the repository, the path will be /usr/lib/llvm-19
export MLIR_SYS_190_PREFIX=/usr/lib/llvm-19
export LLVM_SYS_191_PREFIX=/usr/lib/llvm-19
export TABLEGEN_190_PREFIX=/usr/lib/llvm-19

Alternatively, if installed from Debian/Ubuntu repository, then you can use env.sh to automatically setup the environment variables.

source env.sh

MacOS

The makefile deps target (which you should have ran before) installs LLVM 19 with brew for you, afterwards you need to execute the env.sh script to setup the needed environment variables.

source env.sh

Make targets:

Running make by itself will check whether the required LLVM installation and corelib is found, and then list available targets.

% make
LLVM is correctly set at /opt/homebrew/opt/llvm.
./scripts/check-corelib-version.sh 2.6.4
Usage:
    deps:         Installs the necesary dependencies.
    build:        Builds the cairo-native library and binaries in release mode.
    build-native: Builds cairo-native with the target-cpu=native rust flag.
    build-dev:    Builds cairo-native under a development-optimized profile.
    runtime:      Builds the runtime library required for AOT compilation.
    check:        Checks format and lints.
    test:         Runs all tests.
    proptest:     Runs property tests.
    coverage:     Runs all tests and computes test coverage.
    doc:          Builds documentation.
    doc-open:     Builds and opens documentation in browser.
    bench:        Runs the hyperfine benchmark script.
    bench-ci:     Runs the criterion benchmarks for CI.
    install:      Invokes cargo to install the cairo-native tools.
    clean:        Cleans the built artifacts.
    stress-test   Runs a command which runs stress tests.
    stress-plot   Plots the results of the stress test command.
    stress-clean  Clean the cache of AOT compiled code of the stress test command.

Included Tools

Aside from the compilation and execution engine library, Cairo Native includes a few command-line tools to aid development, and some useful scripts.

These are:

• The contents of the /scripts/ folder
• cairo-native-compile
• cairo-native-dump
• cairo-native-run
• cairo-native-test
• cairo-native-stress
• scarb-native-dump
• scarb-native-test

cairo-native-compile

Compiles a Cairo project outputting the generated MLIR and the shared library.
Exits with 1 if the compilation or run fails, otherwise 0.

Usage: cairo-native-compile [OPTIONS] <PATH> [OUTPUT_MLIR] [OUTPUT_LIBRARY]

Arguments:
  <PATH>            The Cairo project path to compile and run its tests
  [OUTPUT_MLIR]     The output path for the mlir, if none is passed, out.mlir will be the default
  [OUTPUT_LIBRARY]  If a path is passed, a dynamic library will be compiled and saved at that path

Options:
  -s, --single-file            Whether path is a single file
      --allow-warnings         Allows the compilation to succeed with warnings
  -r, --replace-ids            Replaces sierra ids with human-readable ones
  -O, --opt-level <OPT_LEVEL>  Optimization level, Valid: 0, 1, 2, 3. Values higher than 3 are considered as 3 [default: 0]
  -h, --help                   Print help
  -V, --version                Print version

cairo-native-dump

Usage: cairo-native-dump [OPTIONS] <INPUT>

Arguments:
  <INPUT>

Options:
  -o, --output <OUTPUT>  [default: -]
      --starknet         Compile a starknet contract
  -h, --help             Print help

cairo-native-run

This tool allows to run programs using the JIT engine, like the cairo-run tool, the parameters can only be felt values.

Example: echo '1' | cairo-native-run 'program.cairo' 'program::program::main' --inputs - --outputs -

Exits with 1 if the compilation or run fails, otherwise 0.

Usage: cairo-native-run [OPTIONS] <PATH>

Arguments:
  <PATH>  The Cairo project path to compile and run its tests

Options:
  -s, --single-file                    Whether path is a single file
      --allow-warnings                 Allows the compilation to succeed with warnings
      --available-gas <AVAILABLE_GAS>  In cases where gas is available, the amount of provided gas
      --run-mode <RUN_MODE>            Run with JIT or AOT (compiled) [default: jit] [possible values: aot, jit]
  -O, --opt-level <OPT_LEVEL>          Optimization level, Valid: 0, 1, 2, 3. Values higher than 3 are considered as 3 [default: 0]
  -h, --help                           Print help
  -V, --version                        Print version

cairo-native-test

This tool mimics the cairo-test tool and is identical to it in interface, the only feature it doesn't have is the profiler.

Compiles a Cairo project and runs all the functions marked as `#[test]`.
Exits with 1 if the compilation or run fails, otherwise 0.

Usage: cairo-native-test [OPTIONS] <PATH>

Arguments:
  <PATH>  The Cairo project path to compile and run its tests

Options:
  -s, --single-file            Whether path is a single file
      --allow-warnings         Allows the compilation to succeed with warnings
  -f, --filter <FILTER>        The filter for the tests, running only tests containing the filter string [default: ]
      --include-ignored        Should we run ignored tests as well
      --ignored                Should we run only the ignored tests
      --starknet               Should we add the starknet plugin to run the tests
      --run-mode <RUN_MODE>    Run with JIT or AOT (compiled) [default: jit] [possible values: aot, jit]
  -O, --opt-level <OPT_LEVEL>  Optimization level, Valid: 0, 1, 2, 3. Values higher than 3 are considered as 3 [default: 0]
  -h, --help                   Print help
  -V, --version                Print version

For single files, you can use the -s, --single-file option.

For a project, it needs to have a cairo_project.toml specifying the crate_roots. You can find an example under the cairo-tests/ folder, which is a cairo project that works with this tool.

cairo-native-test -s myfile.cairo

cairo-native-test ./cairo-tests/

This will run all the tests (functions marked with the #[test] attribute).

cairo-native-stress

This tool runs a stress test on Cairo Native.

A stress tester for Cairo Native

It compiles Sierra programs with Cairo Native, caches, and executes them with AOT runner. The compiled dynamic libraries are stored in `AOT_CACHE_DIR` relative to the current working directory.

Usage: cairo-native-stress [OPTIONS] <ROUNDS>

Arguments:
  <ROUNDS>
          Amount of rounds to execute

Options:
  -o, --output <OUTPUT>
          Output file for JSON formatted logs

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

To quickly run a stress test and save logs as json, run:

make stress-test

This takes a lot of time to finish (it will probably crash first), you can kill the program at any time.

To plot the results, run:

make stress-plot

To clear the cache directory, run:

make stress-clean

scarb-native-dump

This tool mimics the scarb build command. You can download it on our releases page.

This tool should be run at the directory where a Scarb.toml file is and it will behave like scarb build, leaving the MLIR files under the target/ folder besides the generated JSON sierra files.

scarb-native-test

This tool mimics the scarb test command. You can download it on our releases page.

Compiles all packages from a Scarb project matching `packages_filter` and
runs all functions marked with `#[test]`. Exits with 1 if the compilation
or run fails, otherwise 0.

Usage: scarb-native-test [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -p, --package <SPEC>         Packages to run this command on, can be a concrete package name (`foobar`) or a prefix glob (`foo*`) [env: SCARB_PACKAGES_FILTER=] [default: *]
  -w, --workspace              Run for all packages in the workspace
  -f, --filter <FILTER>        Run only tests whose name contain FILTER [default: ]
      --include-ignored        Run ignored and not ignored tests
      --ignored                Run only ignored tests
      --run-mode <RUN_MODE>    Run with JIT or AOT (compiled) [default: jit] [possible values: aot, jit]
  -O, --opt-level <OPT_LEVEL>  Optimization level, Valid: 0, 1, 2, 3. Values higher than 3 are considered as 3 [default: 0]
  -h, --help                   Print help
  -V, --version                Print version

Benchmarking

Requirements

• hyperfine: cargo install hyperfine
• cairo 2.9.0-dev.0
• Cairo Corelibs
• LLVM 19 with MLIR

You need to setup some environment variables:

$MLIR_SYS_190_PREFIX=/path/to/llvm19  # Required for non-standard LLVM install locations.
$LLVM_SYS_191_PREFIX=/path/to/llvm19  # Required for non-standard LLVM install locations.
$TABLEGEN_190_PREFIX=/path/to/llvm19  # Required for non-standard LLVM install locations.

You can then run the bench makefile target:

make bench

The bench target will run the ./scripts/bench-hyperfine.sh script. This script runs hyperfine commands to compare the execution time of programs in the ./programs/benches/ folder. Each program is compiled and executed via the execution engine with the cairo-native-run command and via the cairo-vm with the cairo-run command provided by the cairo codebase. The cairo-run command should be available in the $PATH and ideally compiled with cargo build --release. If you want the benchmarks to run using a specific build, or the cairo-run commands conflicts with something (e.g. the cairo-svg package binaries in macos) then the command to run cairo-run with a full path can be specified with the $CAIRO_RUN environment variable.